Worldwide
Express

In 2018 Worldwide Express merged with Unishippers. Two shipping platforms had to become one, ready for full truckload next.

The plan was a 1,500-line requirements doc from the executive team, written without a single customer conversation.

“We haven’t gone out to our customers and really taken a customer viewpoint on technology ever.”

CTO, stakeholder interview

The CEO’s take on the legacy tools: “You gotta have a PhD in our system just to use it.” Executives saw research as optional. My first job was changing that before anyone built anything.

Building all 1,500 requirements would have sunk the budget into a product customers might never use. The bet was to find out what launch truly needed first.

The executive team wrote those requirements, and they knew no customer had shaped them. I co-led a nationwide research effort with a dedicated researcher to uncover the real needs: 52 sessions with executives, internal staff, and customers at their own desks and docks.

Every requirement had to earn its place in launch with customer evidence. Step through how 1,500 lines of plan became an MVP, including 64 opportunities the plan had missed.

Research only changes a roadmap when people carry it into rooms researchers never enter.

I ran workshops with my designers and the Worldwide Express team, from service blueprints to card sorts. I partnered with the CTO, COO, VP of Engineering, and program manager to turn the data into a story leadership could repeat.

Each persona leaned on three of the six principles, and every principle served at least two personas.

That overlap gave every team the same test for a decision: which principle does it serve, and for whom? Pick a persona to see its three principles and where each one showed up in the product customers tested.

As consultants, we knew less about the product than anyone in the room, and the pushback showed it.

“UX won’t inform the data model.”

CTO, stakeholder interview

Booking ran through a massive decision engine that chose the results each customer saw. One suggestion was to rank those results by what earned Worldwide Express the most.

We argued for letting each customer’s own decisions keep teaching the engine. Every booking would shape the next set of results, so over time customers would object less and feel more like the platform knew their needs. It was the first principle, use what you know about me, applied to the engine itself.

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Design went into the engine with engineering. We shaped how it learned from customer decisions, and established how shipments get tracked and which statuses exist.

Complex workflows needed a foundation that stayed simple to build on.

I oversaw a themeable design system on Material’s outlined components, with its own color, type, and input standards. One system, with a theme for each brand.

We validated the core workflows with customers, from booking a shipment to paying a bill. Validation caught our misses too: scheduled pickup meant nothing to a shipper with a standing daily pickup.

SpeedShip went live in early fall 2020. A year later, the company it helped unify became a nearly $4B logistics business.

The research decided what got built. The design system let a full engineering department build separate workflows in parallel and still ship one product.

Let AI carry the synthesis, and spend the time it saves on what happens after someone books.

We tagged 1,399 notes by hand, and it took weeks. Today, AI would take the first pass and people would check it against the source notes. That time would go to the flows past booking, where tracking, notifications, claims, and support had already drawn 242 notes.

A strong foundation based in really understanding the users. SpeedShip still runs on that foundation, six years on.

Projekt202 moved me to lead the Sprint engagement, and by early 2020 everyone else had rolled off the engagement. Worldwide Express asked for me back to run point leading up to launch, because I carried the research context. The principles still adorn the office, even post merger.